Primary Election Today!

Today’s the day we Coloradans go to the polls ( at least those of us who don’t care much for that newfangled early voting) and decide who’s gonna appear on the ballot in November for a variety of state and federal offices. My fellow City and County of Broomfield residents can get all the necessary information here, including sample ballots and voting center locations.

Republicans in this neck of the woods have no contested races at all. We Democrats have just one, the three-way contest among Joan Fitz-Gerald, Jared Polis and Will Shafroth to become the Democratic nominee for U.S. Congressional District 2. The Democratic nominee for that office is the winner come November. No Republican has a chance in CD2.

The three candidates for the CD2 nomination are a veritable embarrassment of riches. I prefer Fitz-Gerald based on her experience as a legislator at the state level and her fervent hatred of all things Republican, but we really can’t go wrong with any of these people.

I suspect Jared Polis will win. He made a mint in internet commerce awhile back and has been spending a sizeable chunk of his personal fortune saturation-bombing the airwaves with teevee ads for the past several months. Neither of the other candidates has been able to get within hollering distance of keeping up.

Comprehensive election results from across the state are available here.

According to the Denver Post, Polis spent “at least $5.3 million” of his own money on the campaign. That, together with the approximately $1 million in contributions raised by each of the three candidates, made this the most expensive primary in the country.

Polis’ opponents in November are Republican Scott Starin and a couple of random hippies from the Green and Unity Parties. If Polis wins — and it would be the mother of all upsets if he didn’t — he’ll be Colorado’s first openly gay member of Congress.

So yes, you can buy an election in this state. However, you have to be a reasonably decent human being, unlike Pete Coors.